


Demise

by drabbleandfluff



Category: Bleach
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-20
Updated: 2012-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-16 15:52:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/541211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drabbleandfluff/pseuds/drabbleandfluff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Soutaicho loses his battle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Demise

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Bleach contest: week #84-- despair

_My boy…_

His last breath (his last thought) a stifled sigh across chapped, torn lips.  An exhale of defeat.

Men like he weren’t allowed a peaceful death, to pass on quietly in their sleep.

Men like himself _died standing_ , on bloodied, torn battlefields littered with ghosts; haunted by past sins.

War.

Slaughter.

Genocide.

  
Monster.

He was a monster spoken of in hushed whispers; threatened of, to children shivering in their beds at night.

He was a man (although nobility), who’d understood that he did not deserve a family.  Heirs.  Boys who’d want to grow up to be big and strong like their fathers before them.

  
Shigekuni had prayed that no son, no boy, would ever want to be like him.

  
But he had been cursed.  Not once; where he’d done his best to discourage such naïve worship….

(Chojiro.

Chojiro was a companion, a second in command that Shigekuni could be proud of.  _Was proud of_.  He had grown to become his own man, and an honest and loyal man he was.  Shigekuni would not disparage Chojiro’s name by decrying him, by forsaking what Chojiro believed in for standing by his side.)

  
But twice.

_Shunsui._

Despite all his effort, Shunsui became a part of Yamamoto Shigekuni Genryusai.  Became his conscience, his salvation.  In the young eyes that looked at him without accusation.  Or fear.  Without judgement. 

   
  
God help him, but Shigekuni had wanted. Despite knowing he did not deserve.

He’d wanted Shunsui to look at him without the blood on his hands (blood on his soul).  Wanted to be someone (a man, a mentor-- _a father_ ) Shunsui would; _could_ be proud of.

  
  
_My boy…._

  
  
‘…what if one day it appears again?’

_That will be the day I fail you._


End file.
